Vietnamese pianist wins high prize at Italian piano competition

The contest, which took place on May 3-6, has attracted the participation of 30 outstanding pianists aged from 18 to 37 from Russia, Italy, France, UK, Ukraine, Japan, China, Vietnam and others. The candidates have won several prestigious awards at international piano competitions around the globe.

The jury panel includes five respected members in the international academic arena of arts namely Olivier Cazal from France, Mario Coppola from Italy, Giuseppe Gullotta from Italy, Sofya Gulyak from Russia and  Wang Xin from China.

Pianist Luu Hong Quang successfully performed the masterpieces “Etude Tableaux op.33-9” (Rachmaninoff), “Apres une lecture de Dante” (Liszt) in the preliminary rounds and “Alborada del Gracioso” (Ravel), “Sonata Op.2 - N3” (Beethoven), “2 poems op.32” (Scriabin), and “Mephisto waltz” (Liszt) in the next rounds. The first prize belonged to a contestant from Russia while the Italian contestant won third prize.

Luu Hong Quang was a member of the Vietnam National Academy of Music from 1997 to 2007. From 2008 to 2012, he studied at the Australian Academy of Music and Performing Arts under the guidance of Professor Kyung Hee Lee. From 2013 to 2015, he followed an MA course at Montreal Academy of Music under the instruction of Professor Dang Thai Son. This is the 14th international award he has won so far.